Explicit political promotion, yeah, baby.

[maeve66]

I don't write a lot in here about the socialist group I am in. But I am going to right now. I am in Solidarity, a socialist feminist organization (we could use -- and are trying to do -- some work on the latter) founded by a regroupment (rather than a split!) in 1986. I think. I should know; I was the youngest founding member, at the time.

We're a good group, as American socialist groups go. We try to walk the tightrope in between the abyss of sectarian nuttiness and the vast swamp of reformism. Or some metaphor like that. We're small -- who isn't, these days? Except the ISO. I'm glad the ISO is big; no dog in the mangerhood here. We put out a fairly well respected journal, Against the Current, but it is not a line magazine, meaning that our elected leadership does not vote on political positions and then tell ATC to write articles supporting those positions. Sometimes we publish stuff we strongly disagree about. Our organization, in fact, was founded agreeing to disagree on a few things -- most especially (back in the day) the question of the USSR, and (still relevant) Cuba.

I think we're probably known on the American Left for being pragmatic and realistic, almost pessimistic. Sort of optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect style. We emphatically do NOT look at situations and trumpet triumphalist analyses of them. Sometimes that is a fucking downer, to be honest. But it's also ... well, realistic.

The organizations which formed Solidarity were all sort of refugees from extremely centralized democratic-centralist, Leninist, vanguard organizations. Therefore, the people who founded Solidarity bent the stick pretty far in the opposite direction, to the point that we don't really have "unity in action". If people don't agree on a political question or an orientation, it's a bit like herding cats to get Solidarity members to act in common. They're (we're) more likely to vote with our feet. Anyway, here's the exciting thing: Solidarity is entering the New World of teh internets! I mean, obviously, we've had a webpage for ages. It was redesigned a while ago, and is nicer looking than it used to be. But the really new thing is that we have launched a blog. I am on the webzine editorial committee, and so far it's been the most fun I've had in ages. Somehow it doesn't seem like an effort to write for a webzine, where it DOES seem like an effort to write for ATC... I am one of a bajillion editors for ATC, too, but I hella don't deserve it, of late.

I am very hopeful that the Solidarity Webzine will have live, interesting, and more informal discussion. I also am hopeful that there will be at least some amount of semi-frivolous, pop-cultural posts. I will do my best to ensure that.

Please, drop by and take a look. Comment if you feel so moved.

Solidarity's new Webzine, Click Here

Comments

[serazin.livejournal.com]

You know, that site looks really good.

[brooklyn-jak.livejournal.com]

I've only really given it a quick scan, but I like the look of it--like I would read it. And that is saying a lot because one of my big beefs with so many groups on the left is their inability to make media that people in this century might actually want to read. Thanks for passing it on. I know some Solidarity people here in Brooklyn--well okay--one, I wonder if he is a mutual friend of ours?

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Sort of optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect style.

Excellent phrase. Excellent ethos.

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

I also like the design. It's bright and easy to navigate. I also read a bit of the stories, and they are good as well. I like the site very much.

However, I can't find an RSS feed for the articles. Does it have one? If not, maybe you all should look into setting one up as that really helps keep people involved and reading articles as they come out.

[agent-moody.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I particularly like the coffee, beer, and hammer-and-sickle cigarettes icon. However, I'm wondering how this might affect the production of ATC? Nevertheless, this sounds like a good development (hopefully I'll contribute at some point.)

Therefore, the people who founded Solidarity bent the stick pretty far in the opposite direction, to the point that we don't really have "unity in action". If people don't agree on a political question or an orientation, it's a bit like herding cats to get Solidarity members to act in common.

The non-vanguardist socialist left tends to have this problem in general, and is really the main problem I have with it. Something I've oft heard from outsiders commenting on Solidarity (and the SP-USA too) is that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. This type of "reverse synergy" can be a problem.

Relatedly, someone on an SP list sometimes started his e-mails with "Comrades, slackers, and cats to be herded!"

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Referring to the ISO as large is a sign of the shrunken horizons of the U.S. far left. Compare the thousand or so members they now claim--and as an ex-ISOer I'm always especially skeptical of their membership figures--with the CP back in its day. Not even the nearly hundred thousand of the Popular Front period, when they were going with the New Deal tide, but the early membership of tens of thousands when the party first got together, under conditions of illegality. And that was when the country had less than half the population that it does today. To have an impact on the national political scene, to be a revolutionary vanguard party, an organization would need tens of thousands of active members, many of them positioned in key locations and industries. I don't think any currently existing organization, no matter how large compared to its smaller brethren, is going to get there through a linear process of individual recruitment. Which of course does not negate the necessity of building such organizations based on where one finds programmatic agreement, but requires recognizing that between now and then some qualitative changes will be necessary.